For me, there arises a need to track comments that I have made on other blogs for several reasons.

  • It may be the first time I visit that blog and I would want to track the conversations on an interesting debate.
  • It is a contest on a blog, which I may like to keep track and check to see if anything new has come up.
  • It would be better to track the comments and reply when necessary instead of visiting the post and scrolling through dozens of comments.

For these reasons, I find comment tracking services very useful. Here, I am making a list of three sites to track post comments and one other way to do it, which most of you may be familiar with.

1. Bloppy

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Bloppy is the latest of the the blog comment tracking services. You have to enter the post location and your email address and the service automatically sends emails whenever a new comment is posted. Another interesting feature is that the tracking can be done for a specific time. That is, you can choose to be updated about new comments for, say, 1 hour, 1 week or 1 month etc. After that time frame, the updates are stopped.

bloppy-one-place-to-track-them-all-the-blog-posts-of-course_1184746407187.png

But the downside is that only email updates are offered and nothing else. One can very well use the plugin for this. Also, a bookmarklet for firefox and a widget for Mac OSX is available as well to add posts for tracking. Currently only posts from wordpress, blogger.com, blog.com and sapo blogs are supported but more support is expected.

2. Commentful

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For using commentful, you need to register at Blogflux. After registering, you should head to your watchlist page. Here you add the posts that you want to track. Once you’ve added a post, the list auto updates to give you the current status of comments on the post. The other ways of adding a post to track include installing the Commentful Firefox Extension or using the Commentful Bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet seems the easiest way to add posts without much clutter like the Firefox extension. For tracking the comments, or for getting notified about new comments, you can simply use the extension which will place a bulb status bar that indicates new comments. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed of your watchlist to get updates. You are also able to subscribe to daily email updates about the comments.

However the disadvantage seems to be that you can only get updates about the comments and not actually view the comments. So, you will have to visit the site or the pots page to get the comments which defeats the purpose, in my opinion.

3. Co.mments

Co.mments is certainly the simplest and the best of the services I am reviewing here today. The interface is uncluttered and the working is simple. All you have to do is go to your tracking page, add the post you want and click track. Automatically the post is updated and a new conversation appears in the page.

Here, the number of comments are shown along with the time when each comment was made. The entire content of the comments are shown on demand. Co.mments also offers a wide variety of tools for you as well.

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Tools offered by co.mments:

In the case of bookmarklets, first, add the bookmarklet to your favorites (IE) or bookmarks (Firefox, Safari, other). When you read a post you want to follow, simply click on the co.mments favorite/bookmark. The co.mments server will then follow up and find new comments for you.

You can receive e-mail alerts regarding the updated post comments on a daily basis. You can also share your tracking page with friends using a public page and public feed provided to you. You can post the list you are tracking on your blog with a copy-paste code. Also, you can blog about a post directly from co.mments after entering your blog details.

Also, there are numerous keyboard shortcuts that you can use on co.mments to navigate effectively. You can check out the conversations page to get a list of recently added posts.

4. coComment

coComment requires registration as well. To use coComment you need to download either the bookmarklet or the firefox extension similar to the other two services(co.mments and commentful). But the catch is that there is no other way to add any posts to the tracking list. So, this puts coComments at a serious disadvantage when compared to the other services.

When you are using the firefox extension, any post you comment on, will automatically be tracked by coComment. When using the bookmarklet, just click the bookmarklet button before submitting the comment to enable tracking. After doing this you can simply visit your personal page to track the comments.

You are also able to share the comments you’ve made with the tools available on the site. It is possible to integrate coComments with wordpress using the coComment Enhancer plugin. You can show the top commenters on your blog and also people who comment on the same blog as you do. But these features are restricted only to the members of coComment which, I am sure is nothing substantial in proportion to your blog’s visitors.

Tracking comments – Plugin for your blog:

The above four services are primarily for users of your blog to track comments on your own. But a blogger can integrate the subscription process within the blog by using the Subscribe to Comments plugin. This inserts a checkbox beneath the comment form that the users can check to gain updates to comment on a particular post. This is an easier way for the users of your blog to keep themselves updated instead of looking for other sites to do this.

I hope you found this post useful. If you liked the post, do consider sharing it. Please leave your comments on the post and on the services if you’ve had any experiences with them. Thanks for reading!


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